


Ice, Ice, Baby

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Friendship, Marriage Proposal, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 17:16:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18608998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: Tony would really just like to propose to Pepper, thanks.





	Ice, Ice, Baby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladybons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladybons/gifts), [Vampirelala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vampirelala/gifts).



> What's a Thanos.

“I’m going to ask one last time, Stark.”

He’s seen Pepper angry heaps of times.  _ Tons  _ of times. He’s seen her handle Hammer and Killian and himself, but he’s never been quite so freaked out by her as he is right now.

It’s probably the glowing red eyes. They’re sort of implying that he didn’t get  _ all  _ the nanotech when he flushed her system, and that the threat of fire-breathing is real and present.

“Where,” she says, leaning over his workbench with murder written all over her face in flashing neon letters, “did you send Happy?”

“On an errand,” Tony says, pretending the collar of his polo shirt isn’t stuck to his neck with nervous sweat. “A very important errand he didn’t trust  _ me _ to go on.”

The murder on Pepper’s face becomes felony assault, and Tony unclenches very slightly.

“Did he need to go on this errand this morning?” she asks. “You know, when I have the shareholders meeting?”

“Is that what this is about? Pep, come on - I can drive you!”

 

* * *

Pepper concedes, and is twenty minutes early to her meeting.

“Now I remember why I never let you drive me anywhere,” she says once she’s out of the car, and then she throws up into the nearest pot plant. Tony would take offence to that, but Pep’s always had a delicate constitution when he’s behind the wheel, and maybe he  _ did  _ cut a couple of lights and swing wide around a few corners.

She’ll be fine. Mean Alice will have seltzer and crackers upstairs, meant to go with the cheese plate she keeps on hand for Happy but just as good now, and Pepper will crush the board meeting or whatever, 

“Someday,” she says, tossing a tissue that Tony hopes she took out of her tiny handbag in the trash can by the pot plant, “I’ll drive. I’ll put you in a horrible old truck with no seatbelts and I’ll show you how  _ I  _ learned to drive, Mr. I Got My License On A Formula One Track.”

“I didn’t get my license in San Marino, I just learned to drive- Pep! Come on, it wasn’t  _ that  _ bad, was it?”

“I’m going to call Phil,” she says firmly. “He can give me a ride to the airport.”

“Wait, what airport?” Tony asks, scrambling to keep up with her. He runs like, five miles every morning,  _ and  _ he’s wearing sneakers, but when Pepper hits her stride in her Louboutins she may as well be an Olympic sprinter. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to get dinner tonight-”

“I’m going to Malibu tonight, remember? To oversee the rebuilding of the house?”

Shit. He hadn’t remembered, had thought that was  _ tomorrow _ night.

“Oh, well, I’ll meet you at the airport then,” he says. “It’ll be fun. We can pick out throw pillows.”

“Tony,” Pepper says, stopping him with her hand flat to his chest. “I have to go pick out windows. I have to choose doors. I have to choose a staircase. Please let me do that, and then in a few weeks, you can come out with me and we’ll choose plants for the garden, okay?”

“Do we even  _ have  _ a garden?”

“According to the new plans you signed off on three months ago, we do.”

She kisses his cheek - which is good, because she hasn’t had a mint yet - and promises to call from Malibu.

He calls Happy from the car.

“Hey, Hap,” he says. “You can put the ice back on ice - Pep’s abandoning me for the weekend.”

_ “Good for her.” _

 

* * *

“All I’m saying,” Bruce is saying, “is that it might be a good idea to  _ tell  _ Pepper that you’ve booked the observation deck?”

“Why would I do that? The whole point is that it’s a surprise, Banner.”

“I get that,” Bruce agrees easily. “But she’s a lot busier than you are. Might be that she doesn’t have  _ time _ for a surprise.”

“In what world is Pepper busier than me?” Tony asks indignantly. “I toil - no, I  _ slave  _ tirelessly for the betterment of the  _ world _ -”

“Of course. But she has a real job.”

Someone let Peter into the lab to do his homework, and he giggles to himself in his corner as if Tony wouldn’t be well within his rights to kick the little jerk out on his bony ass.

“Less of that, Parker,” he warns. “You’re Team Stark, remember? Always Team Stark.”

“Uh, sure thing, Mr. Stark,” but the kid is still giggling. Tony will let this one slide, but he’ll remember, too. He’s got footage of the kid drooling on his Chem notes that is just  _ waiting  _ to be sent to that Michelle kid.

“Pepper loves surprises,” Tony says. 

“No, I don’t think she does.”

“Pete, back me up - women love surprises, right?”

“I think Aunt May would kill me if I said yes right now.”

“Traitors everywhere!”

“Listen,” Bruce says. “I get it. You want to make a big deal of this but you don’t want Pepper to realise how  _ much _ of a big deal you’re making of it. But you should still talk to her about it.”

“Or at least ask Mean Alice if Miss Potts is in town on Thursday,” Peter offers. “I can ask! She doesn’t hate me!”

“The implication being that she  _ does  _ hate me,” Tony says. “Nice, kid.”

“All we’re saying is, maybe just ask Pepper out on a date before you hire the entire Statue of Liberty,” Bruce says.

Tony pauses.

“No!” Bruce says, before Tony can say a word. “No, you can’t hire the Statue of Liberty!”

“Miss Potts wouldn’t like it anyway,” the kid says, as if he’d  _ know. _

 

* * *

Turns out Pep’s at some kind of conference in Nairobi on Thursday anyway. The ice stays on ice.

 

* * *

“This time,” Tony says, “it’s  _ definitely  _ going to work.”

The house in Malibu is done, they’ve flown everyone in for a housewarming, and Pepper wouldn’t let Tony see her dress which means it’s  _ really  _ special.

“She’ll kill you,” Rhodey says, dusting off Tony’s shoulders. “And if she doesn’t, Happy will - do you know how hard they’ve worked on the house? No, because you’d have to take off your tin can suit to know.”

“C’mon, Rhodey, this is different-”

“Nah.”

“Come _ on-” _

_ “Nah. _ I’m on Pepper’s side in this.”

“Why is everyone always on Pepper’s side? Did I do something? Did you not like your Christmas present?”

“I’ll always love having a friend who thinks it’s appropriate to buy me a Ferrari for Christmas,” Rhodey says, setting to work on Tony’s tie. “But I’m on Pepper’s side in this because it’s so cheap to propose at a party  _ she’s  _ throwing.”

“It’s  _ my  _ house!”

“Not since you signed over all your assets to Pepper, Tone. Leave the ice in the cooler, man. Let Pepper show off  _ her  _ house.”

“You’re getting a Honda for your birthday. A three-door Honda.”

 

* * *

“So I was thinking,” Tony says, blasting the bot that’s attempting to climb all over Cap and then tossing the one creeping up on Widow into a wall. “Pepper loves opera.”

“Please tell me this isn’t the conversation I think it is,” Cap says, bouncing his frisbee off half a dozen robots and a tree, catching it like a goddamn Greek statue. “Someone fry the coms if this is that conversation.”

“If I have to suffer this, so do you,” Widow says, accepting a lift from Tony and dropping into a crowd of bots with an EMP that flattens ten or fifteen - Tony’s too busy dodging Thor’s hammer to count. “We’ve all been deal with this for weeks while you’ve been in DC, Cap.”

“As I was  _ saying,”  _ Tony says, echoed by Hulk’s distant roar, “Pepper loves opera.”

“She isn’t going to want you to build her an AI that sounds like Pavarotti, Tony,” Clint says - Tony can’t even see him, and can only estimate his location based on the trajectories of his stupid non-explosive, non-enhanced, super-effective arrows. “And she isn’t going to want you to buy the Met Opera, either.”

“I was  _ not  _ asking for your opinion, Barton,” Tony snaps. “C’mon, Romanoff, you know her almost as well as I do-”

“Better.”

“-so you’ll agree that she’d  _ love  _ this. Imagine it. Dramatic lighting. Dramatic music. And in the middle of it - dramatic  _ me. _ ”

“She’d hate that,” Cap says. “I already hate it, and I’m not even involved.”

“You’re uninvited from the wedding, Rogers.”

“Pepper will invite him no matter what you say,” Romanoff says, sounding far, far closer to laughter than she should be, considering she’s elbow-deep in sparking robot guts. “She thinks he’s  _ charming. _ ”

“She won’t think you proposing in the middle of Aida is charming, though,” Barton says, and Tony really wishes he could see the asshole so he could zap him, just a little. “This is maybe your worst idea so far, Stark.”

 

* * *

 

 

Turns out Pepper prefers ballet, anyway.

 

* * *

 

 

“If you truly seek a betrothal with Virginia,” Thor says, sitting very still while Bruce’s Betty stitches a healing matrix into the huge burn on his back, “then should you not approach her father?”

“Pep’s dad is dead, hon,” Betty says, tilting him very slightly with her fingertips to his shoulders. “And her mom would laugh if Tony asked permission.”

“Excuse me, Doctor Ross, but when did  _ you _ meet Rosemary Potts?”

“Pepper and I are friends, Tony,” Betty reminds him. “I met Rosie when she was in town last month - you were in… Bucharest, I think?”

Thor is full of questions about Rosemary Potts - he loves asking about everyone’s  _ lineage,  _ and once he’s learned the names, he likes to meet the people behind them - but Tony starts to think,  _ hmm.  _ He starts to think,  _ maybe.  _

He texts Rosemary Potts asking if she can put off her crystal healing or whatever for a couple of days to come into town for dinner.

Her reply proves that it was not from her father that Pepper learned to swear.

“Do not be so downcast, my friend,” Thor says cheerfully. “If what Doctor Ross says is accurate, then Virginia would be insulted if you succeeded in asking her mother for her hand.”

“I’m accurate to a fault about things like this, Thor,” Betty promises him, sticking a bandage to his back. “Tony, you need to stop thinking so big - you know Pepper. You know that all she’ll want is for you to pick a ring she’ll like, and food she likes, in a place she likes. No big plans, no big fuss, no going… Full Tony on it. She loves Full Tony, but not for something like this.”

“C’mon, Betty,” Tony whines. “I’m  _ me. _ I  _ am  _ Full Tony!”

“Yeah,” Betty agrees. “And she’s Full Pepper - try and find a middle ground.”

“Or present her with a wolf pelt,” Thor says. “I have a particular wolf in mind for Jane, but I cannot imagine Virginia refusing something more mundane from you.”

“A wolf pelt,” Tony says. “Uh. Thanks, big guy.”

Pepper doesn’t wear fur for moral reasons - even though she eats meat, so whatever - but there’s got to be something similar he can do for her.

Maybe if he buys her a new company? Would that be the equivalent of Thor hunting down like, a star-wolf or whatever?

“Keep it low key, Tony,” Betty calls after him, before the door closes. “Intimate. Don’t go Fully Tony!”

Full Tony would absolutely buy Pepper a new company as an engagement gift. Maybe Half Tony can manage something a little… Sweeter.

 

* * *

So he cooks. He generally doesn’t, but he can - he’s pretty good at it when he tries.

He goes out himself and picks up a couple of bottles of that dry white she likes, and a bottle of that heavy red she loves with dessert. He cooks, and he wears a nice shirt, and he lays the table the way Pep likes. He lights candles, and he arranges flowers, and he dims the lights right as she walks through the doors.

BARF, who absolutely does not sound like his Nonna Carmela, clears her speakers before he steps out of the kitchen.

“You love her?”

“Just because you  _ sound  _ like Nonna Carmela, does not mean you get to  _ speak  _ like Nonna Carmela,” Tony warns her, and then he goes to Pepper.

“Oh, wow,” she says, letting him take her hand as she steps down out of her shoes. “Tony, this is - did you cook? Is that your mom’s carbonara? And is that my pasta maker? Did you  _ make  _ pasta? Tony!”

“Yes, yes, yes, and yes,” he says, herding her over to sit down. “Park your rear and zip your lip a second, Potts, and we can eat.”

“Are these peonies? Tony, I didn’t have peonies ordered this week, when did they arrive-”

“What part of zip your lip escapes you, Pep?” he asks, completely exasperated now. “C’mon, shut up a second so I can wow you by excelling in yet another arena.”

Damn, it was less stressful breaking out of that damn cave. His hands are shaking a little as he plates up the pasta and the sauce and takes the garlic bread from the oven, but he gets everything to the table without any casualties. 

His plan is to wait until dessert, and to put the ring box sitting on Pepper’s plate beside her panna cotta. There’ll be quiet string music in the background, and the lighting’ll come up just a little, and she’ll hopefully say yes.

“Will you marry me?” Pepper asks around a mouthful of garlic bread, with her hair scraped back in a bun on top of her head. “I think we should get married.”

Tony gives her the ring box and then doesn’t talk to her for the rest of the evening.

Well. Except to say yes, obviously.


End file.
